


True Steel

by Saucery



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Androids, Angst and Humor, Drama, M/M, Robot Feels, Robot Sex, Robotics, Robots, Romance, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 21:54:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles finds and repairs a broken android, but the android may be broken in more ways than Stiles can fix.</p><p>Or, the one in which Derek is a robot and Stiles falls in love with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	True Steel

**Author's Note:**

> I AM SORRY, THIS IS ANOTHER WORK-IN-PROGRESS. FEEL FREE TO AVOID READING IT UNTIL IT IS COMPLETE. UNLESS YOU'RE A GLUTTON FOR ~~CLIFFHANGERS~~ PUNISHMENT. IN WHICH CASE, GO AHEAD.

* * *

 

Stiles doesn’t believe in endings. Heck, he doesn’t just recycle things that  _should_  have ended; he reanimates them. From tiny transistors to pet robodogs to kitchen bots - if there’s a machine out there that’s broken, he fixes it; if it’s been abandoned, he finds it a new home.

He’s got kind of a thing for circuitry. It makes more sense than most human relationships do, anyway. Programming pathways and re-welding metal joints is way simpler than trying to explain to his hospitalized dad why he’s still single, why he hasn’t started a family, yet.

Stiles can’t exactly say that his machines  _are_  his family, and that his dinky, funky-smelling shed filled with the stench of singed wires is his home.

He can’t tell Dad that he hasn’t got a decent job because he quit college to pay Dad’s medical bills; he can’t explain how he now makes a living by selling refurbished bots that he scavenges from the town’s waste-yard.

In another life, he might’ve been an award-winning roboticist. But in this life, he’s not, and he’s truly okay with that. There’s a sort of Zen to it, to repairing things that the rest of society threw away. There’s a tenderness to it. And maybe he’s weird for feeling that way about machines, but that’s how it is. He likes his life, even if he can’t tell his father about it. He likes it just the way it is.

Today, he’s at the dumpsite again, looking over things most folks don’t bother looking at twice. They drive by the giant heap of trash pretending not to notice it exists, safe behind its wire fence. The only people who give a - pun intended -  _crap_  about it are the few ‘recyclers’ permitted to enter its grounds as long as they get rid of some of that junk. Stiles is one of those recyclers, and proud of it.

He’s sorting through a small stash of broken debris when he sees it - and it’s so amazing a sight that he literally has to look away and pinch himself before looking back.

It’s a  _head_. An honest-to-god android head. Almost complete, except for the synthesized skin singed off its forehead. There are burn-marks along the jaw, as well, the wires at its severed neck curled and blackened. Was it caught in a fire, or something? It’s not operating, that’s for sure - its red eyes are dull and still, but there’s a chance the motherboard is still intact, since the skull is.

Stiles takes all this in, and then sits down heavily next to the head, because his legs no longer support him.

Holy shit. Holy. Shit.

Stuff this good just doesn’t happen to Stiles. Buying a droid on the market is something only millionaires can afford, and here a droid is - well, a droid  _head_  is - ready for the picking. Sure, the rest of its body is AWOL, but it's probably somewhere around here, in the same stash, albeit in pieces. If Stiles can locate most of them, he can build the rest. He can save this droid. Have it talk to him, maybe. Jesus. An actual droid. An  _actual droid_. Stiles is absolutely certain that if his brain wore pants, it would’ve creamed 'em, by now.

He spends a few hours scrambling through the pile and every other pile within sight until he locates a matching torso, an arm and a leg - and enough scrap machinery to build the rest.

*

It takes him the better part of nine months to rebuild even just one arm and one leg, and to put all the limbs together and get all the wiring right, because it’s incredibly fine work that’s usually done by a team of highly-paid roboticists with the best equipment, not some random guy with minimal resources and a single, flickering bulb for lighting. Stiles doesn’t even have all that much time to devote to it, because he needs to be working on ten thousand other things that actually put food on the table, not his crazy pet project in which he rebuilds a multimillion-dollar android in his broken-down shed.

Since it’s taking about as long as the standard human gestation period, Stiles starts calling the droid his ‘baby’, and doing stupid shit like playing it music and telling it why Led Zeppelin still rocks and talking to it about everything including his childhood crush on Lydia, like maybe the droid can still hear him when it’s on standby, like maybe Stiles can keep it company.

Yeah, Stiles is a big ol’ softie. Possibly a delusional softie. So sue him.

Stiles knows that the sensible thing will be to sell the droid once he’s rebuilt it and retire on the proceeds, even if he has to sell it on the black market, in order to avoid getting sued for copyright infringement by the droid’s original manufacturers. But Stiles won’t do it, because a) Stiles’s dad didn’t raise him to break the law, and b) Stiles can’t bear to part with it. Not now. Not after he’s been staring at that face for so long that it seems less like a machine than a person that happens to be asleep - not when he’s worked so hard to get the damn droid to wake up.

“Y’know, Sleeping Beauty,” he says to the droid, busy welding together the delicate tracery of wires between the droid’s neck and its shoulder, “I think I’m going to hang on to you. Unless you have other plans. Um. That sounds like I’m asking you out on a date, but… I’m not. Honestly. I’m not hitting on you, even if you’re hot, because you’re a machine and I don’t hit on machines, especially unconscious ones. Not that I’d hit on you if you were conscious, either. There’s the whole consent thing, plus the whole free will thing, and - whoa. Whoa, did you just  _twitch_?”

But the droid doesn’t twitch again, no matter how Stiles stares at it hopefully, so Stiles sighs and gets back to work.

*

The droid wakes up on a rainy Friday afternoon, after Stiles places a red plastic bucket under that hole in the corrugated roof that just keeps leaking. Damn annoying, those leaks, especially in a metal-rich environment that could do with a minimum of moisture.

Stiles turns back to press the droid’s reactivation button again, almost idly, not really hoping for anything - but then ends up jumping back with a startled yowl when the droid’s hand closes over his arm.

“Oh, crap!” Stiles exclaims. “You’re awake! How long - ”

“Master,” says the droid, sitting up in a single, smooth movement. The red eyes flash open. “My designation is D3R3K, colloquially known as ‘Derek’. How may I serve you?”

Stiles gapes. “Uh,” he says. “Er, to start with, maybe you could not call me ‘master’? That freaks me out.”

“How do you wish to be addressed?”

“Stiles is fine. Also, could you let go, now? My arm’s starting to bruise.”

The droid’s red eyes flick to where he has a grip on Stiles, and he lets go, slowly. “My apologies. I did not intend violence. However, my initiating protocol requires touch.”

“You’re a touchy-feely one, huh? Next thing I know, you’ll be telling me you’re a…” Stiles pales. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me - you’re a - ”

“I am a sexual service android, first constructed by Argent Technologies in the year 2102. My internal clock tells me that it is currently the year 2122.”

Stiles’s jaw drops open. “You’ve been around for  _twenty years_? You’re older than I am! By a year, even.”

“I know,” says Derek, managing to sound snooty despite his deadpan tone. “My master is nineteen years old and sexually inactive. This is a situation that must be rectified.”

Suddenly, Stiles is acutely conscious of the fact that Derek is naked. Stiles hadn’t been thinking of him as ‘naked’ before, mostly because Derek was still (at the time) an inanimate machine, but - damn. Stiles has to get Derek some clothes. And teach Derek some subtlety. “Hey, hey, hey. Let’s take it down a notch. I don’t want sexual service, all right?”

The droid - Derek - tilts his head. Somehow, Stiles can’t bring himself to think of Derek as an ‘it’, now that he’s speaking, and everything. “I am grateful that you have reanimated me. After exposure to your personal habits - ” Stiles flushes at the memory of his many confessions to an unconscious Derek, including the confession of just how hard up he is and how much pornography he downloads “ - I believe I can sate your desires, including but not limited to Japanese rope bondage and ‘fucking to the sweet sounds of classic rock’.”

“You.” Stiles is so red, he must resemble a tomato fresh from the produce aisle. “Don’t quote me on shit I said when I thought there was a chance you weren’t listening. Also, I don’t do droids.”

“Then what purpose am I to serve?”

“The purpose of being around? Helping me build things, maybe?”

“Build things.” Is it possible for droids to sound disapproving? Because Derek sounds disapproving.

“Yeah. Build things. I’m sorry if your previous masters were awesome in bed or whatever, but I don’t have sex with machines that are programmed to have sex with people. It just ain’t right.”

Derek’s shoulders bunch as he slides off the table; his pectorals flex in a distracting way. Stiles experiences a moment of staggering alarm at the thought that sex droids are built to find any and all ways of pleasing their masters, including by just  _moving_  a certain way. Derek seems to have the ‘seductive movement’ thing down pat.

Stiles swallows. “Um. Maybe you could. Maybe I can. Fetch you something. To wear.”

“I do not find my nudity unsatisfactory. And as your heartbeat has accelerated,” Derek’s red eyes narrow, “neither do you.”

“Clothes! I’mma get you some clothes. And you’re going to stay here and figure out ways to lounge against the table without looking like a centerfold, okay? Okay.”

Derek takes a strangely menacing step forward, for definitions of ‘menacing’ that include ‘sexy as hell and with a slight sway of the hips’.

Stiles flees.

 

* * *

 


End file.
